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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 5338478" data-attributes="member: 5143">I had a couple of players who would over-quote the rules to me.  Mostly, because they didn't trust that I was making the right calls.  Although, part of the reason my players trust me now is that I've slowly earned that trust.  Each and every time they say "Hey, he already took an AoO", I say "Yep, but he's got Combat Reflexes" and they say "Oh, cool".Sure, it adds another couple of seconds to the game, but I feel it increases the trust between the players and I.  They know I'm not cheating, I know they aren't cheating.  And after a short while, they just stop asking about the same things, since they learn to trust that I know what I'm talking about and I'm making the right decision.  So much so that I can say "Don't worry, the enemy has the ability to do that" and no one questions me after that.I just don't demand that trust, I earn it over time.I think house rules are needed in games with bad rules or with big holes in them.  Early D&D had huge holes in it that if they weren't corrected with house rules you had players running around twisting the rules constantly.I have found that in the more robust games, especially ones with lots of rules, that house rules often cause a house of cards effect.  Change one rule and the entire game comes tumbling down.It depends on the group whether they notice that the game has come tumbling down, however.  I've joined a couple of games where, once I was explained the house rules, I realized that it made certain classes immensely more powerful than others.  But no one in the group was interested in playing those classes, so no one noticed.  I came in and started playing one of those classes....and instead of deciding that their house rules were dumb because they allowed me to do that, they blamed me for playing that class.I recently had a discussion about this topic with friends of mine who refused to switch to 4e.  I explained to them that the reason I stopped playing 3.5e was that the rules were broken in that they allowed players to come up with extremely overpowered combos.  They told me that they had never seen an overpowered combo.  But wanted me to join their game.  I suggested the character I'd play to prove to them how broken the rules were.  They said they wouldn't allow that character in their game.  They proceeded to reject my 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th ideas for characters as well.I pointed out that if they rules allowed me to make so many different characters that were horribly broken, then the rules were flawed.  They told me the rules weren't flawed, any player who attempted to use those rules were bad players.I find this happens even more often with house rules at 95% of them haven't been thought through all the way.  They create a weird loophole, imbalance or other issue when they are introduced.  And when someone points out how bad the rule is, they boot the player out of their group for disagreeing with the rule rather than reconsider it.</blockquote>

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